Wednesday, September 22, 2010

As promised, here's a look into a few of our puzzlers' minds from the Puzzle Finale. First up Quad, employing a sensible excel method in trying to represent 3 dimension and the associated data on a flat surface:

Here's Jason's direct, bricks-and-mortar approach:

And here's Mr C, who apparently hired the folks at Pixar:

And finally, going old-school with an actual pencil and paper is UBragg:

What I find most interesting about UBragg's photo is his stationary. Is that a Braille legend at the top and Morse code to the left? The man was born to puzzle.

As such, he finishes on top in both the puzzle itself and the overall rankings. Mr C and Jason remained entrenched in the 2nd and 3rd spots, and Quad leapt six spots to #4 with his impressive showing. Here's how the full rankings landed:

I actually had a spreadsheet as well but completely screwed it up with turn two at which point I reverted to the less mentally taxing, physical cube approach. Since the cube is actual work swag, complete with post-it obscured product logos, I had no problem playing it off as: "I'm just contemplating a really hard 'work-related' problem. Mind your own business, boss."

Also, the guy that sits next to me saw what was going on and busted out his 6x6x6 super Rubik's Cube. What a nerd.

You can buy these awesome puzzling pads here: http://www.shinteki.com/cart/

Also, if you like puzzles, I highly recommend the puzzle events run by the folks that run this site. They are awesome, too. The Shinteki Decathlons every summer are worth the trip to the Bay Area, even if you live in SoCal.